About a month ago I saw the real Spartan was putting on a virtual race. After looking it over I said that’s pretty weak and our PAX can do one better than that. So, the wheels started spinning. First person I reached out to was our resident Spartan expert Kid Rock; his response was “I was thinking the same thing”. Here we are today.
Purpose:
Why Not! Let’s have some fun, break up the routine a little and continue blazing the trail for F3 Waxhaw.
The course will be 5k ish in total distance with 20 pain stations along the way. Keep in mind that the course will be mainly grass and trails (could be muddy so dress accordingly). We don’t want Moneyball complaining! 2.0 are welcome; however, I would recommend middle school and above or if you have a Speed Bump kid. Use your best judgment.
The course map and exercises were posted on GM. Everyone will find out details of pain stations when you get to each station (all are reasonable). Gotta be some element of surprise!
Each pain station will be marked with an orange cone and a sign/description of the exercise.
The course will have flags marking the way.
We get up every morning to do what? Get better, stronger, be with the boys and have fun! Joining the Convergence on Saturday will be a great opportunity to do all those things.
We are going to keep time in case we decide to do the event again in the fall and PAX want to compare old vs new time.
WHAT TO BRING
*Coupon
*Water
*Good attitude
*Wiliness to push yourself to be uncomfortable
Other important items
Parking at Rudy’s shed
Start time is 7:00, be there 15 minutes early for instructions and set up
Bring a chair for 2F
Stick around to help clean up the course
Bathrooms are locked
DONATIONS
Coffee – Provided by Shop Dog
Donuts – Provided by Blue Screen
Bottled Water – Provided Easy Button
Bananas – Provided Kid Rock
Big numbers for a Monday 24 in total- must have been the over indulgence of Father’s Day. It’s always good to have a seasoned Site-Q like Rockwell to make sure you’r ready to go. Big Shout out to Wedding Singer making a return trip from out West. He looks to be in shape so must be laying off the edibles and munchies….
DCCS (although I kind of missed the FNG – so note to keep on the look out)
Mosey to front of middle school to start – Standard SSH, Merkin, MTN Climb, Dougan, squat
Off to the line of buses – start at first bus and do 5 merkins – run to furthest bus and do 5 Bobby Hurleys. run back and forth reducing by one each way with the same sequence – 5 merkins at top and 5 BH’s at bottom.
Mosey to the middle school cafe tables: 15/20/25 – 3 exercises derkins,dips and step ups
Mosey to the parking spaces just past Rudy’s Poop Palace – everyone grab their own parking space. slide merkins at top of space, bear crawl side, slide merkins bottom of space, bear crawl other side – total of 3 laps around your space – this was tough on the shoulders.
Mosey to the circle by the football field. run down to the bottom circle 15 SSH – run past circle to benches and 15 pistol LBC’s — for 2 laps total.
Mosey on to HS lot and begin trail back to COT. Alternate at every light: 10 walking lunges and 5 hand release merkins.
on time at COT
Lots of semi-new faces and a strong showing for a monday after father’s day. Everyone pushed themselves today as the six was never far behind – so good work all around.
besides the long timers – and you know who you are – good work by some of the folks that I may not be all that familiar with: Wax, Tiny Teen, Baklava, Fruit Loops, Matar and Noonan – keep it up and keep showing up.
welcom Eli aka “Cookie” Eli does some underwater welding work so from Men of Honor – Cuba Gooding Jr’s name was “Cookie” -not half bad Pax – nice name
Announcements –
100 PAX challenge @8K
Keep eyes open for raffle of a super cool custom Lazy Boy – more to come
Impromptu Friday – monitoring CHS graduation via the airwaves to see if this will have an impact on our morning workout – if you hear anything let me know
Saturday – Spartan Race-
THE NBA IS BACK! Well almost. Celebrated this morning with a basketball-themed boot camp beatdown. Focus on Agility, Strength and Endurance, breaking the workout into four quarters. SPOILER ALERT: The Hornets don’t make the playoffs #theresalwaysnextyear
Warmup
First Quarter
OVERTIME
Moleskin
Via email from High Hat:
8 Pax met up for a bit of boot camp with some distance today. I am confident the majority of them weren’t prepared for distance, but all did great.
DICCS – Always have to give the DICCS (Disclaimer, CPR Check, Cell Phone Check and Safety Reminder) Done.
The Thang:
Circle about around Henry Nesbit. Some quick warm up and off we go.
The plan was to run a mile out straight through, to the workout site. Reading the crowd I called an audible to Paula Abdul our way to the work site, alternating squats with merkins. The mile turned into two, with the Paula Abdul’s.
Arrived at the Millbridge construction zone, for a tour of the next building phase. Run around the new phase, stopping at every intersection for 2 burpees.
Start the mile mosey back, no Paula Abdul, but stop at every 3rd light pole for lunges. Stopped about 1/2 mile in for 1 minute plank and others to catch their breath. Stopped again for a 1.5 minute elbow plank for the same purpose again. Finished up the run back to Nesbit down the back trail.
Covered 4 miles. We had a fair amount of Clydesdales that really never complained and just pushed through. Great job gents…especially you Sledge-O-Matic.
Announcements:
Cradle to grave…I prayed us out.
Short and sweet for this backblast. This is an example for those of you not blessed with the ability to write literary prose that you can simply bust out the basics and get a backblast written in 10 minutes.
13 men posted at Kevlar this morning…but before I get to that…..
I nearly forgot all about writing backblasts then after seeing some new FNGs recently I remembered how much I loved reading them when I first started F3. I would wait check often to see when they were posted and loved remembering the humor that comes out of each workout. So, here’s my first one in a long time and I’ll plan to keep making time for them going forward because at one point they were pretty important to me….
Psalm 30:5
“…sorrow may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning”
This verse kept popping in my head the past year….
Thanks to my F3 brothers
I was out of F3 for the past 12 months and made it back out about a month and a half ago. I’ve shared the story too many times recently but I was getting terrible hives all over my body whenever I worked out or got hot (even 5 mins in the sun) until the hives spread to my throat and cut off my breathing (seen Hitch? yea that). After a couple of ER visits and a dozen doctor appointments it was determined that I had mold toxins in my body. Once it was diagnosed I was able to take medicine and slowly I was able to work out again. I was told things by traditional doctors like “This is a lifelong thing” and “it’s going to take at least 3-5 years to run it’s course”. If anyone knows anyone dealing with this let me know because it’s debilitating and I’d love to help them. P.S. you need a naturopathic doctor to help you.
I could go to the air conditioned Y to lift but had to take it really slow. That’s often where I saw other F3 guys. I’d see them running in to the Y together, see guys running on the street early in the morning. I almost hit the Sparta runners in a crosswalk one morning. It was really hard to see guys working out because a big part of my life was taken away. I did not have cancer or a terminal illness but taking F3 away from me (and many other things I love to do) was just depressing. My wife couldn’t handle it because I would sit on the couch on a Saturday and just sit…I couldn’t exert myself at all or I would be miserable.
One amazing thing about being away of F3 were the brothers who reached out over the year to check in. I even had guys drop by my house just to see how I was doing. I know I’ll miss someone here but I’m extremely grateful to the following guys who took time out to see how I was doing: Squid, Joker, Spackler (after 5 whiskeys at a party he heard the full emotional story and maybe a weird hug), Hops, Alf, Tolkien, Horsehead, Purell, Gypsy, FaultLine, Manziel, Hopper, Witch Doctor, Funky Cold, Cheese Curd, Rhapsody & Wormwood (and many more). You have NO IDEA what it meant to have you all touch base and see how things were going. It was very lonely year and it helped to know that I wasn’t forgotten. So, THANK YOU
I started running again slowly before coming back to F3 and one particular morning I was running through Kevlar AO and past the rock pile that we use and the sun was coming up over the trees and I was just so happy to be running. I raised my hands to the sky and praised God and remembered “though sorrow may last through the night, His joy comes with the morning”. His mercies are new each morning and He has promised that if we believe in Him, no matter how sorrowful our lives may get, He will deliver us.
He taught me a lot in the past year about pride, selfishness, anger and so many other things that were sinful in my life. It was a long year but I grew in other ways outside of the firm quads I used to have from all the Monkey Humpers. Now I’m back and I’ll just say to you all, please don’t take it for granted. Wake up early and push hard because it can all be taken away…
On to Kevlar:
13 guys came out this morning including 3 pre-runners (Horsehead, Rhapsody and myself)
Not sure how far we ran but Horsehead explained to me the beauty of being able to make fun of people to their face at F3 (instead of social media) and the risk of getting punched in the face is what makes is so much fun. That’s all I remember about the run.
The Thang:
Ye Mole:
July 3rd CONVERGENCE at Kevlar (with Joust). 6am launch time for a 1hr long workout. Hops & Ductwork will lead.
-Orange Whip
11 fellas answered the call and weren’t scared of a little forecasted rain.
Mosey to Cantina
20 Canadian Foward Straddle Hops
20 Imperial Walkers
20 Mountain Climers
Mosey the short way to Wild Turkey’s Hill.
Triple Nickel
5 curls
Up the hill
5 squats
Repeat 5 times. Finish early? keep going.
Mosey to Far Rock Pile @ Brown Bag – 10 merkins
Grab a lifting rock
10 curls
10 tricep extension
10 overhead presses
Run down to big rocks, 10 derkins
run/bear crawl the second lot section
Repeat 3 times.
Mosey to the Brown Bag Lot
7s.
Merkins at the bottom
Jump Squats at the top
Mosey back to Stonecrest Fountains
10 Dips
10 Step-Ups
3 Times through
Mosey back to launch, give it some gas for the last stretch. TIME.
Moleskine
Great group. Thanks for the opportunity to lead.
At least Lorax thought the instructions for our main event were in Japanese. He clearly doesn’t pay attention for more than 5 seconds of instruction. I think he still got his money’s worth even though he took a short cut on one of our sets. Snooka was only too happy to play dumb and follow along in order to skip a ramp run. Floor Slapper and Motor Boat also cut off one set of stairs but it’s ok to do that when you are not in the lead and the short cut doesn’t put you in front. 8 other men basically did the correct routine as clearly communicated in Japanese.
The Thang:
COP with 5 burpees, 15 IW, 10 burpees, and 15 mountain climbers.
Run over to the facility next to the CCHS practice field and grab a decent size rock. Head up to top of parking deck via stairs at northwest end of deck for instructions on our main event:
COP for a few minutes of mary waiting for pax to finish up. Take rock back down to resting place and mosey back to starting point. Finish with a few minutes of exercises (don’t recall what they were – I was smoked at this point).
NM
Great morning and strong group of 12. Hops was actually early so the morning was perfect, even the directions. Cane has been getting his money’s worth in the gym and he hung up around front all morning while Lorax and Snooka took a DQ for the short cut. Hopefully the new faces experienced a good workout.
It’s good to see the numbers consistently above 10 as 10-16 is a perfect number in my view. Next time we will flip the tractor tires down on the practice field.
As always, it was a privilege to lead such a great group of men.
Announcements – Hawks Nest still meeting at Dunkin Donuts until at least Labor Day. Will find a new AO if Charlotte Latin campus doesn’t reopen then.